Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group chairman Anil Ambani on Thursday turned hostile in the 2G spectrum case, backing out of his statement to the CBI, particularly on the existence of Swan Telecom (P) Limited, one of the recipients of 2G licence.
“I am not aware of any company by the name of Swan Telecom (P) Limited. Reliance Telecom Limited is a subsidiary of Reliance Communication Limited and I am non-executive chairman of the latter company. Earlier I was on the board of Reliance Telecom but I do not recall the period. I am unable to recall if I was on the board of this company in 2007,” Mr. Ambani said in reply to a prosecutor’s query, while recording his evidence as prosecution witness in the court of Special Judge O.P. Saini here.
But when he was shown a form for opening a bank account on behalf of Swan Consultants (P) Limited at an ICICI Bank branch in Mumbai and his attention was drawn to the signatures and photographs of persons authorised to operate the account, Mr. Ambani admitted that it bore his signature and that of his wife Tina.
He also admitted that copies of his and his wife’s PAN cards, tagged with the account opening form, bore their signatures. But he refused to identify a document captioned “declaration for promoter owned company.”
“I have also been shown annexure 2 under the caption ‘declaration for promoter owned companies’, which mentions the name of the parent company as Reliance Energy Limited and the names of common promoters as Anil Ambani [myself] and Tina Ambani ... I am aware of neither this document nor the contents mentioned therein, as this is a document of the bank,” Mr. Ambani said.
However, he identified three of the accused. “I have been shown photographs of Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair … against their names and I identify them. However, I cannot identify their signatures. I identify these three persons as they are part of the group. However, I cannot recall their designation now.”
